Adaptive Web Sites
An adaptive web site (AWS) transforms a page request into a final page response by considering some or all of the available information about: (1) the page requested, (2) the user, (3) the way the site has been used, (4) the environment of the site, and/or (5) the environment of the user. Transformations can include: (a) modifications to content (such as the inclusion or exclusion of images, paragraphs, or links); or (b) modifications to the presentation of the content (such as swapping different presentation formats for equivalent content, transforming a content fragment into another format, or removing a piece of content).
AWS Frameworks
An adaptive web site framework attempts to describe the interplay between the content of a web site, the usage of that content, the users who consume the information, and the packaging and navigation structure of that content. From this, we can see that there are many potential data inputs arising from those interacting components. The AWS frameworks make useful adaptations to the web sites based on data available, and so to maximize available data it can do usage mining, structure mining, content mining, and user profile acquiring as well as clustering to find groups within each or across multiple streams of data. Usage is meant to be interpreted broadly to include, without limitation, any browser activity, which may be deterred from or without limitation: (i) the low-level browsing of single pages (used in, for example, session reconstruction from page views); (ii) transactions, which are collections of page views to accomplish a purpose; (iii) finding sequences of concepts that a person browses (which is similar to transactions, but is even more abstract); (iv) finding sets (or sequences) of product purchases; (v) finding time-related patterns of activity or time-independent patterns; (vi) finding patterns within a single user's activity; or (vii) finding patterns common to large groups of people.